Month: February 2017

~ Brin ~ 5 Comments

I watched the first issue (both parts) of Season 12 of the Red Panda Adventures yesterday! I did say something about maybe doing more reaction-blogging, so:

God, I’d forgotten just how bad I am at stories with pictures, especially stories with pictures and words, and especially especially moving pictures. (It could be worse: they could be moving photographs rather than drawings.)

Pictures are so complicated; even if I can take my time, I usually miss a bunch of stuff*, and it only gets worse if it’s time-limited. It probably doesn’t help that I’m used to Red Panda episodes being purely audio: I suspect it strengthens my tendency to treat videos as basically audioplays, just with minor visual enhancement (getting the broad strokes of the imagery and missing all of the details).

(This is one of the reasons I have a lot of trouble with any webcomic** more complicated than XKCD, the other reason being that even steady webcomics update so slowly that by the time they reach the end of a plot thread, you’ve forgotten what the beginning was. When you combine these two effects, you tend to end up with climactic moments relying on minor details that I haven’t seen in ten months and also didn’t even notice at the time. I’m sure there must be people webcomics work for, but they really do not mesh well with my brain.)

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I did have fun. I just had to strike a compromise between “overwhelmed by quantity of sensory input” and “not getting the full effect of the story”, and I’m a bit out of practice at that.

Maybe I should try watching these episodes multiple times, shifting my focus on rewatches. They’re short enough that it wouldn’t take ages: I could probably even do two watches of an issue consecutively without burnout. (Even without soaking in Everything, watching videos gets mentally taxing after a while. One standard-length TV episode (~45 min) is somewhere around my limit.)

—

*Fun fact: image descriptions have a curb-cut effect. I’m (effectively) not blind, but I often find I understand an image (especially a comic) a lot better after I’ve read an image description, because the description pointed out important bits that I didn’t notice. (I wonder if I should try described video sometime.)

**I haven’t really tried non-web comics.

Tags:

#Red Panda Adventures #(okay so this was more about my relationship with video-based media in general than about RPA specifically but still) #oh look an original post #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #I was researching video conferencing recently for a school assignment #and the supporters praise it for conveying zillions of microexpressions and whatnot #which to me seems like a *downside* #video chats immerse you in so much input that your brain *has* to dump most of it #but you have limited control over which parts get dumped #and your conversational partner doesn’t know what made the cut and what didn’t #ideally you want to prevent people from sending messages you’re not going to receive #so that they *know* you don’t know it #(and if your partner is better at processing large quantities of real-time information than you are) #(they have an advantage over you) #(which they might exploit) #tag rambles #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #reactionblogging

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

autisticandroids:

in the communist utopia of the federation, class differences are so taboo as to become kinks. what i’m saying is,

julian bashir, wearing a tuxedo and carelessly holding an artisan wineglass, eyes half lidded: oh miles, say that again!

miles o’brien, in a greasy mechanic outfit, putting on his best show of Righteous Rage:  labor is entitled to all it creates

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

theyrecirclin:

I needle-felted a Spinosaurus! He’s a gift for one of my lecturers. He took around a week to make over the course of two or three months. I used a wire armature, so you can move him pretty much any way you want! I’m definitely thinking of taking commissions/setting up a shop once the academic year’s over.

When the weather improves, I’ll take him outside for a more naturalistic photo shoot.

Tags:

#dinosaur #art #sculpture #pretty things #I like the colours of this

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

argumate:

another-normal-anomaly:

Unpopular opinion: if it’s true, it should always be acceptable to say “I can’t pronounce that; it has phonemes not present in my native language.”

or I have a lisp or other speech impediment or hearing impediment etc. etc.

Tags:

#yes this #fun wif forn fronting #there’s plenty of names from my *own* culture I can’t pronounce let alone other people’s #(sometimes) #(if I think about it for a while) #(it bothers me a little that I’ve never heard my father’s name) #(not the way it’s *meant* to be heard) #(qualia are weird) #(I suppose that means this qualifies for the tag) #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #racism cw #ableism cw

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

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theshadiertwin:

brin-bellway:

@theshadiertwin asked:

Welcome to Decoder Ring Theatre fandom!  What episode are you on?

shortly followed by: Ah!  I see you caught up!  I’ll amend my question, then – what was one of your favourite episodes!

I try to only answer asks indirectly because of the first-degree ask bug, and normally that works fine. On the other hand, if I post the ask unanswered and then give my actual answer in a reblog, it won’t go in the public tag, and that doesn’t seem suitable for this. I’m compromising by putting ask and answer in a text-post OP.

—

To pick one…well, the one that comes to mind is “The Golden Idol”. I love when characters think through the implications of their superpowers. The Mad Monkey’s plan here is *magnificently* clever, creating an entire fake person out of glamours and memory implants.

I spent a few minutes of this one facepalming when it looked like he’d enthralled the Flying Squirrel, seeing as how the show had *just gotten done explaining* that you can use mind control to prevent people from getting mind-controlled by others, which means that–as someone with a mind-controlling partner whom she would trust with her very soul–Kit Baxter has possibly the best access to psychic shielding on the planet. Shouldn’t they have learned their lesson after Diablos?

And then it turns out that our heroes *totally thought of this*, and she’s actually been faking being under the Mad Monkey’s spell this whole time so that he would let his guard down. That was a beautiful moment.

I love clever plans, and I love when they’re defeated by out-clevering (both the bluffing and how the Red Panda figured out what was going on in the first place), and basically cleverness is my narrative weakness.

—

(When I skimmed through the episode again just now to see if I’d gotten it more or less right, I heard Kit mention Ajay Shah as a potential suspect, and I was like “Hey! I know who that is now! Neat!”. Once I’ve finished the rest of the pilots and tie-ins, I’m going to have to re-listen to the series at *least* once to hear how it sounds from the perspective of having the whole thing. I *know* I didn’t get as much out of the “The World Next Door” as I could have, for one.)

If out-clevering is your thing, I can see why RPA works well for you!  I do love those episodes, but a part of me always prefers when a villain (usually the Genie, tbh) tries to make some clever complicated plan specifically to counter the Boss, but overlooks Squirrel and her Flying Fists of Anti-Magic Justice.  It just makes my heart sing when she makes the henchmen cry.

Re: Earth-2/Sillyverse/The Originals, don’t go in expecting what we got from the main storyline.  Not only was there not enough time to fill out the plot, there’s a lot of other rough edges as well.  Some fans can’t get past that, and I understand that.  As for myself, I love the Sillyverse – there are some Canadian History in-jokes that the more serious tone of the main plot just can’t work in, and for all that Dr. Anna is less active in the plot than Kit, she’s still a woman who can stand on her own two feet – both in the lab and in the field.  Besides which, there’s no episode in all of the DRT catalogue that hits all my hurt/comfort buttons quite like the Sillyverse episode “The Judas Boats”.  I keep meaning to write a Red/Baboon/Anna fic based on a certain incident in that episode, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.  Even if it’s not the kind of thing that really grabs you, I do suggest giving it a listen – there are occasional references in the main story, especially in the WWII episodes, that will make you grin a bit on a re-listen!

(also, hope you don’t mind, but I’ve mentally pegged you as Harry Kelley in our little tumblr network of agents!)

>>don’t go in expecting what we got from the main storyline.<<

*nod* I know. I heard them saying how different it was in the Season One Spectacular (which I did listen to, but several seasons late because I didn’t notice it existed at first).

>>there are some Canadian History in-jokes<<

My grasp of history is often a bit shaky in general, plus as a first-generation immigrant* I’m missing a lot of the cultural osmosis one might get from growing up in Canada. (I only just found out a week or two ago what the Red Ensign was named after.)

>>(also, hope you don’t mind, but I’ve mentally pegged you as Harry Kelley in our little tumblr network of agents!)<<

Why’s that, if you can put it into words?

(Big shoes to fill, but at least I’ve got a while to do it in.)

—

*I moved to Canada when I was 13. The 10th anniversary will be this fall**!

**I don’t think we’ve made any plans yet, but my family should do something extra-special this July to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation and our 10th Canada Day. (Whatever we end up doing, I intend to wear my citizenship pin while I do it.)

Tags:

#Red Panda Adventures #our home and cherished land #reply via reblog

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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@theshadiertwin asked:

Welcome to Decoder Ring Theatre fandom!  What episode are you on?

shortly followed by: Ah!  I see you caught up!  I’ll amend my question, then – what was one of your favourite episodes!

I try to only answer asks indirectly because of the first-degree ask bug, and normally that works fine. On the other hand, if I post the ask unanswered and then give my actual answer in a reblog, it won’t go in the public tag, and that doesn’t seem suitable for this. I’m compromising by putting ask and answer in a text-post OP.

—

To pick one…well, the one that comes to mind is “The Golden Idol”. I love when characters think through the implications of their superpowers. The Mad Monkey’s plan here is *magnificently* clever, creating an entire fake person out of glamours and memory implants.

I spent a few minutes of this one facepalming when it looked like he’d enthralled the Flying Squirrel, seeing as how the show had *just gotten done explaining* that you can use mind control to prevent people from getting mind-controlled by others, which means that–as someone with a mind-controlling partner whom she would trust with her very soul–Kit Baxter has possibly the best access to psychic shielding on the planet. Shouldn’t they have learned their lesson after Diablos?

And then it turns out that our heroes *totally thought of this*, and she’s actually been faking being under the Mad Monkey’s spell this whole time so that he would let his guard down. That was a beautiful moment.

I love clever plans, and I love when they’re defeated by out-clevering (both the bluffing and how the Red Panda figured out what was going on in the first place), and basically cleverness is my narrative weakness.

—

(When I skimmed through the episode again just now to see if I’d gotten it more or less right, I heard Kit mention Ajay Shah as a potential suspect, and I was like “Hey! I know who that is now! Neat!”. Once I’ve finished the rest of the pilots and tie-ins, I’m going to have to re-listen to the series at *least* once to hear how it sounds from the perspective of having the whole thing. I *know* I didn’t get as much out of the “The World Next Door” as I could have, for one.)

Tags:

#Red Panda Adventures #tales from the askbox

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